Want Ice Cream Sandwich on your Intel or AMD mobile device? Delivering on the promise made to developers earlier this year, the x86 version of Google’s latest mobile OS is now available for download, but there are some caveats to the early release.
It’s not official and not completely stable just yet, but keen beans willing to give it a go on their Intel-powered or AMD-powered mobile device can download the source code from the Android-x86 group. Some important functions like sound, camera, Ethernet and hardware acceleration on Intel aren’t working just yet, but Wi-Fi, multitouch, OpenGL ES and hardware acceleration on AMD is reportedly working.
This release represents interesting times for Google, who has forged a partnership with Intel’s x86 platform, while Microsoft cosies up to ARM’s mobile platform for Windows 8. At the Intel Developer Forum back in September, Google announced that all future versions of Android would be optimised for Intel chips from the ground up. Get cracking, devs. I want to see Android in everything. [9to5 Google]